Into Something Rich and Strange
by tasteofshapes
Summary: Ichigo doesn't know when it starts, but he finds himself looking at Rukia whenever he thinks she's isn't paying attention, and she keeps catching him at it and frowning puzzledly back at him. He concludes that he would not make a good spy, but the way the dawn light plays over her face is a mystery that he is determined to solve.


A/N: An anon asked: "IchiRuki, the first time they said I love you and meant it romantically?", which also happened to tie in nicely with Day 28 of Ichiruki month - the prompt was puppy love. I had to skip several days of prompts to finish this, but oh man, writing this was SO. MUCH. FUN. I've played fast and loose with the manga and LA movie and basically combined both into one long timeline, so this is somewhat canon compliant.

If you have an Ichiruki prompt for me, feel free to drop it into my ask box over on tumblr here.

Ichigo doesn't know when it starts. Maybe it begins during one of those lunches, when Mizuiro talks about his latest girlfriend, and the other boys curiously press him for more information: _how far have you gone? Have you held hands? Have you kissed? Are you planning to go to a love hotel?_ He's too busy thinking about how he can squeeze in more training, so he completely misses Mizuiro's replies, and is taken aback when the group's attention suddenly refocuses on him and his relationship with Rukia.

"So what's going on with you and Kuchiki-san", Keigo asks, a sly smile on his face, and Ichigo is forced to confront the reality of the nature of their relationship.

"Nothing", he says truthfully, and maybe the answer pricks at him more than he thought it would.

Or maybe it starts even before then, on one of their early morning training sessions down by the riverside, when he looked up and saw the way the wind rippled through her hair, and realised, with a startled sort of ache in his chest, that Rukia was fiercely beautiful with that sword in her hand. Either way, the dawning knowledge that _something's_ happening that he doesn't quite understand makes him grumpy.

Despite having had one secretly living in his closet for the last month, Ichigo doesn't know the first thing about girls. He's never really noticed them except to observe that they come and go in a pack, and they're always giggling and blushing every time they look at him or call his name. He supposes that's why he's never really noticed that Rukia was a girl – logically, he _knows_ that she is, but Rukia isn't part of any of the girl cliques that form and break and reform again every week like the tide, and she definitely doesn't blush when she's around him. She's just… Rukia, and she drifts through the school days like a jellyfish, invisible and indistinguishable from the hundreds of other students that course through the hallways of his school.

So it's with a certain amount of surprise that he looks at her one morning, his training sword knocked out of his hand and hers pressed to his throat again, and says, "You look different."

"I- what?" Rukia's nonplussed, but her sword doesn't waver as she darts a quick look down at herself. She's wearing their mandated school uniform, not a button out of place.

He frowns, because the way the dawn light plays over her face is a mystery that he is determined to solve. "Did you do something with your hair?"

She blinks at him in confusion. "No? Ichigo, focus. I've got my sword to your throat, what's your next move?"

"You'll surrender?" He says, and she just laughs at him.

"And how do you plan to make me, fool?"

In reply, he knocks her sword aside, grabs her hands and yanks her forward. She stumbles straight into his arms and he catches her automatically, then takes three quick steps forward and pins her against the tree. He presses a forearm against her throat, his free hand gripping both her wrists and pressing them into the tree trunk above her head. She's warm and tiny under his hands, and her eyes are wide as she looks up at him in surprise.

"So," Ichigo says, and he's proud of the fact that his voice comes out steady, "we were discussing the terms of your surrender?"

Rukia scowls up at him so unhappily that he laughs, and the moment is gone. It's something that he can't stop thinking about though, a memory that filters to the surface of his consciousness over and over again. After that, something changes. There's a subtle, but noticeable shift that he can't quite put his finger on.

Ichigo doesn't give it much thought after that, except that he finds himself looking at Rukia when he thinks she isn't paying attention, and she keeps catching him at it and frowning puzzledly back at him. Ichigo concludes that he would not make a good spy.

It finally hits him one afternoon, when they stay back after class so that he can help her with English Literature. The classroom is empty, and it's just them, twin heads bowed over the textbook as if in prayer. English is her worst subject, and Shakespeare completely eludes her. He's explaining a scene in Romeo and Juliet to her when she shakes her head and says, sounding lost, "but they just met! How do they know they love each other?"

Ichigo shrugs. "They just do. Romeo falls in love with one look at her _beauty too rich for use, for he ne'er saw true beauty till this night_, and then he realizes that he never loved anyone until that moment. And Juliet falls back in love with him when they kiss for the first time."

She lifts one skeptical eyebrow. "That sounds awfully shallow to me. What kind of love can survive on a foundation as shaky as a look and a kiss?"

Ichigo privately agrees. "Puppy love," he suggests. At her quizzical look, he elaborates: "eh, when you're young and stupid, it's easy to fall in love. In all the books they say it only takes a moment to capture a heart. The small things, you know, like the way she laughs or turns her head, or how she glows in the morning when the sunlight hits her face…"

He trails off as Rukia lifts her gaze from the textbook to look him with those big, violet eyes, and then Ichigo realizes that he's been describing her all along. He stares dumbly back at her for what seems like an eternity until she looks away, uncomfortable. The silence stretches on and on.

"Rukia, I," Ichigo says, mouth dry, and then stops, because he doesn't know what comes after. He doesn't know what this is, and he doesn't want to say things to her if he can't be certain of what he means.

"It's getting late," she says abruptly, avoiding his eyes as she stands up and starts gathering her books. "We should head back before it gets dark."

Ichigo doesn't remind her that it's four in the afternoon, and that the sun doesn't set till seven.

He scrubs a hand through hair, frustrated at himself, but says, "yea, alright," and starts packing up too. They're quiet on the way back, and there's an awkward distance between them that stretches like an ocean.

On the surface, nothing changes, but now he's conscious of her in a way that he never was before. She's a puzzle that he's just beginning to understand.

He mulls over it as he queues up with her to buy her lunch. Rukia has depleted whatever credit she had during her time in the Living World and she has no source of income, so more often than not, he ends up being her personal ATM. At first he buys her things that she's not used to with the aim of helping her get used to the modern world: curry buns, potato snacks, and canned Coke. She duly tries them all, but then one time he catches her eyeing the ramen stall longingly, and from then on he makes it a point to get her something that he definitely knows that she likes.

Today, it's curry rice. Meal duly purchased, they make their way over to a table in a corner and he pulls out the homemade bento that Yuzu has made: salmon teriyaki with tamago and deep-fried tofu, topped with a generous helping of rice. He would have asked Yuzu for an extra one for Rukia, except that he can't quite come up with a good reason for it.

"You're lucky Yuzu's such a good cook," Rukia says, eyeing his tamago, and he automatically cuts it and puts half on her plate.

"You're being nice today," she says, sounding confused.

"I'm always nice."

"Not this nice. And anyway, your face says otherwise. I think half the girls in the class are terrified of you."

"Only half? I must be losing my touch." He pauses, and it stings that she thinks he's stingy enough that he wouldn't share his food with her. "Rukia, you know you can always ask me if there's something you want. If I can get it for you, I will."

A look of apprehension settles over her face, but before she can reply, Chad appears behind her, with Keigo and Mizuiro in tow.

"Is this a lunch date, or can anyone join?" Mizuiro says, making flirty eyes at Rukia, at the same time that Keigo says, "Ichigo, you sneaky bastard! So this is where you've been disappearing to during lunch! Kuchiki-san, has he been hitting on you? What a terrible experience that must have been for you!" Despite the sympathetic words coming out of his mouth, Keigo's giving Ichigo obvious winks of approval and there's a massive leer on his face.

Ichigo closes his eyes and contemplates if he would get away with murdering the two of them in front of half of the school.

"Ah, company!" Rukia says, and the relief is evident in her voice. "Please, sit! Making conversation with Kurosaki-kun has been such an ordeal. He's all broody frowns and dark looks, and now he's saying he wants to give things to people for free? He is clearly insane and I think this is why he has no friends."

"You poor thing," Mizuiro says insincerely, and drops into the seat next to her, and Ichigo resigns himself to spending the next half an hour fending off inappropriate personal questions from his friends.

He tries to bring it up again a few days later after they finish a round of Hollow hunting. He's getting stronger, the Hollows are getting easier to vanquish, and he's riding a successful post-Hollow high when he turns to her and says, "do you think you'll still need me in the future?"

"Huh?" Rukia's distracted, checking the mobile.

"Once you get your power back. Do you think you'll still need me?"

"Oh. I haven't really thought about that, so I don't have an answer for you right now. To be honest, it doesn't feel like I'm getting any stronger." She clenches and unclenches her fist, troubled by the way her body responds, and he can't help himself as he moves towards her and touches her shoulder.

"Well, no matter what, I'll always be your friend."

Rukia looks up at him in alarm. "A Shinigami and a human can't be friends," she says cautiously, and he snorts.

"Then what would you call this? Of course we're friends. In fact, we're more than friends, aren't we?"

"Are we?" She says softly, uncertainty written on her face, and this is his undoing.

"Of course we are," he says, and they're standing so close now that he can feel the heat radiating off her body. "You live with me, and I buy you lunch everyday. We're- we're..." He doesn't have a word to describe this. His hand is still on her shoulder, her hair brushing against his fingers. Abruptly, she takes a step back.

"It's late. We should head back."

He's thrown by the sudden change, but swallows the protests lodged in his throat because Rukia looks wary, and he's not so selfish that he would push this onto her.

He blows out his breath, says, "okay," then turns around and couches down on one knee, offering his back to her, hands positioned to catch her. "It'll be faster this way," he says when she doesn't move.

She's hesitant, but they're several miles out of town and walking will take ages, so she gets on. She's a warm weight on his back, a reminder of the storm of confusion swirling inside him. They don't talk for the rest of the night, and he doesn't bring it up again.

Things finally come to a head after he fights Renji and loses, and ends up lying on the school's rooftop staring up at the sky while she frantically tries to rub away his wounds.

"Rukia," he says, "what are we going to do?"

She goes still, but she doesn't reply. The sunset that day is a brilliant watercolour of pink and orange, but all he can see is her by his side, head bowed. It's finally then, when he has to face the threat of having her taken away, that everything crystallises and he sees what this tiny girl has begun to mean to him. But there's no time and no good moment to say it; he has a month to buy her freedom, and he throws himself into training with renewed vigour. Rukia's too worried about the possibility of him dying to concentrate on anything else; she completely gives up all pretense at being human and spends most of the school day staring blankly out the window.

Ichigo knows this, because now he spends most of _his_ school day watching her stare out the window. He's vaguely aware of his classmates whispering about him, but he doesn't have any spare energy left to wonder what fresh rumours are circulating around him and Rukia this time. He trains harder than he's ever done in that month, and they talk battle strategies at night, and he tries not to think about how each passing day is a countdown to her life.

In the end, he loses. Byakuya stabs him twice and then it's over. He's left on the ground, bleeding out, and her eyes are filled with unshed tears as she looks at him for the last time. There's so much to say and not enough time to say it. Ichigo watches her go with her brother and Renji, watches the gates open and swallow her up, and closes his eyes against the hard knot of failure in his chest.

Except that it's not the end. He gets stronger and goes to Soul Society and beats up everyone who stands in his path, upending centuries of orders and rules along the way, and saves her.

"Yo," he says, and the way her eyes widen comically as she stares at him is worth it. Worth every scar, worth every drop of blood split, worth what he has had to transform himself into.

"You idiot," she screams a moment later. Predictably, they get into a fight right before she's about to be executed.

But he saves her, exposes the traitors rotting in the core, and then it's all over. He doesn't relax until she's been officially pardoned. Once it's done, once she's finished yelling at him for being _such a fool, Ichigo, is your head completely empty?_, they find an unoccupied rooftop on a random building on the 13th Division's grounds and he lies back against the tiles and lets out a long sigh that he didn't know he had been holding in. It's a months-long sigh, a deep sigh of satisfaction, and he feels his whole body go loose and liquid.

"Why did you come," Rukia says, and he hates how uncertain she sounds.

"Dummy, you saved my life. You changed my world. Of course I would." The tiles against his back are warm from the sun, and he's deliberately not looking at her.

"Ah. Well, if it's because you think you have a debt to repay," and he wonders if that's a note of disappointment that he hears in her voice, "you can consider your debt discharged."

He snorts in reply, raising himself up on elbow to look at her. "This was never about repaying a _debt_, Rukia. You idiot, isn't it obvious how I feel about you by now?"

Her face is a mixture of emotions that he can't read. "Oh," she finally says. "So is this... puppy love?"

He snorts again, staring at her with incredulity. "Rukia. After all that we've done for each other, I think we've gone a bit past the puppy love stage by now, don't you?"

"Oh," she says again, faintly. The silence stretches out before them.

"Anyway, you know they die at the end, right?"

"What?"

"Romeo and Juliet. She's destined to marry another, but they fall in love, so they try and marry in secret, only Romeo gets banished. So Juliet tries to fake her own death to escape and be with him, only he thinks that she's actually dead, and kills himself. Then she wakes up and finds him dead, so she kills herself."

Rukia's eyes grow wider with every passing sentence. "That's a terrible story! I can't believe they actually teach you this."

Ichigo shrugs. "It's meant to be a romantic tragedy, you know, the two lovers killing themselves because they think the other is dead."

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Killing yourself for no reason is no way to honour the memory of the person you love. But trying your best to live your life in honour of them, that's how you know they were important, that they meant something." Her voice grows soft. "Ichigo... if I had been executed, I would have gone peacefully, knowing that I had given my life in exchange for someone that meant a lot to me."

"Oh," Ichigo says. He's thinking about what she said, about sacrifices and his mother, and it takes him a full minute before the rest of her words finally hit him. Then, "_ohh_." He looks at her then, trying and failing to hold back a smile. "So, you mean me?"

"Well, actually I was referring to Chad." Rukia says, deadpan, and he laughs and daringly, reaches out for her hand. She looks at him in surprise, but she doesn't pull away. Her hand is warm and small in his, and his breath hitches as their fingers carefully interlace. The world has gone golden from the rays of the setting sun, and his chest is tight with joy.

"So, what now?"

"I'm going to stay in Soul Society for a while," she says decidedly, and he raises an eyebrow but doesn't interrupt. "I'll need some time to recover and get my powers back. And then after... after, I'll come and find you."

"I'm going to hold you to that," Ichigo says firmly. She nods.

They sit there until the sun sets, and the lights of Soul Society come on one by one, twinkling like constellations in the dark. Rukia leans against his arm and rests her head on his shoulder, and they stay like that for a while, until it gets too cold. Then he walks her back to the Kuchiki manor, telling her about his fight with Kenpachi, and she tells him that he is a lucky moron of the highest order and he should stop courting death so literally.

Everything goes back to normal, only now they try out this new thing of holding hands when no one's looking, and he feels giddily happy whenever he sees her. They have a few more of these rooftop conversations, and then he leaves a few days later, with the others, and Rukia comes to see them off at the gates.

"I'll look for you," she tells him quietly, as the others exchange goodbyes, and he grabs her hand and squeezes it quickly.

"It's a promise." He looks at her for one long, last moment, trying to commit the image of her kimono flapping in the breeze to memory, and she smiles at him.

"Thank you for everything, Ichigo," she says.

Because he still always wants to have the last word, he says, "that's my line, Rukia," and then hurries through the gates.

Returning to real life after that is like a punch in the gut. Everything is loud, frenetic, and he feels one step behind and out of sync. The world moves too fast without her in it. But he remembers her words, so he refuses to let himself pine, forces himself to join in, and slowly, a sort of equilibrium returns. Still, he leaves his window open every night, waiting.

Then one day, one particularly bad day, he hears the shocked gasps of his classmates and looks up to see her standing at the open windows of his classroom, outlined against the sun. His heart stutters to a stop.

"What's with that look on your face," she demands, and he has no idea what she's talking about because the next thing he knows she's kicking him in the face.

"What the - Rukia!" He yells, furious, and she grabs him and drags him out of the classroom. She gets the whole story out of him, makes him apologise to Orihime for being weak and pathetic, and then the ball of shame that he's been carrying around in the pit of his stomach abruptly dissipates.

"You big idiot," she says fondly, "can't even survive a month without me?"

He scowls. "I didn't know how long you were going to be away! You could have given me some warning, you know!"

"And where would be the fun in that? You should have seen the look on your face. It was like you had seen a ghost!" She chuckles at her own joke as they walk back to class together.

"Funny," he mutters. "Are you staying with me?"

She turns to look at him in mock surprise. "Don't you want me to? Have you moved on already, Kurosaki-kun? Tsk, what a fickle heart you have."

"Rukia!"

She laughs at his outraged expression. "My things are already in your room," she says comfortingly. They pause outside the classroom. "I'll find you after school," she promises, and then she slides the door open to a wall of noise as his classmates pounce on her and drag her in and demand to know where she's been. He can't get anywhere near her for the rest of the day.

Afterwards, he waits impatiently by the school gate, checking his watch every few seconds. It's sticky and humid, the air heavy with the promise of rain. She comes running up, face flushed, and he's struck by how happy she looks, how alive.

"Yo, Ichigo," she says, brushing her hair out of her eyes and all he can think is, _beautiful_.

"Stop stealing my lines." He says, and she laughs at him.

They don't touch, but they are close enough that their hands brush against each other as they walk back slowly. There's no need to rush, and they settle back into their routine as easily as if they were never apart. She catches him up on what she's been doing in Soul Society, and he tells her what he's been up to.

The rain starts as they're halfway back, and they make it a run for it before giving up and taking shelter in the awning in front of a closed shop. Rukia's completely soaked through, and she couches down, shivering, her hair sticking to her cheeks.

"It's cold," she says, sounding surprised, wrapping her arms around herself, and Ichigo digs into his bag and pulls out his rumpled school jacket.

"Here," he says, then squats down in front of her and drapes his jacket over her shoulders. His face is close enough to hers that his every exhale is a puff of warm air against her cheek.

"Thanks," Rukia murmurs, ducking her head. The jacket's oversized on her, and he tucks the fabric more securely around her. His hands linger on the collar of his jacket, and then he grabs the lapels and gently pulls her forward and brushes his lips against hers.

She kisses him back, sweet and slow, and he doesn't realise how long he has been waiting for this moment until it happens. He's breathless and flushed when they finally part, and the words that he has wanted to say to her for a long time finally bubble up to the surface.

"Rukia," he says, and at that moment, he's never been more certain of anything else in his life. "I love you."

She smiles back at him, her face bright like the sun, and says, "I know that, you dummy. I love you too."


End file.
